Iraq short of doctors, health official says

Pauline Jelinek, The Associated Press

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, September 6, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Iraq only has a third of the doctors it needs because killings and kidnappings of the medical professionals prompted many to leave the country, its military surgeon general said Thursday.

A recent decline in violence is tempting some to return, said Brig. Gen. Samir Abdullah Hassan, surgeon general for the country's soldiers, sailors, airmen and special forces.

Speaking with Pentagon reporters, Samir said he didn't have figures for the number of doctors practicing in Iraq now compared with the number before the war. But the military alone has only about a fourth of the physicians its needs; there are 148, and the need is for 600 to 700, he said.

For the country overall, the Ministry of Health only has 35 percent of the physicians it needs to staff its civilian hospitals, he said.

Samir, who was trained as an orthopedic surgeon, was in Washington the past week for meetings with U.S. military and civilian medical facilities.

He said colleagues who had fled to Jordan, Egypt and other nations have been in touch with him recently, saying they would like to go home.

"I can assure you if the security improved more and more, the majority of them would return back to the country," Samir said. To attract and keep more in the profession, the government also needs to increase salaries from the roughly $300 a month now paid to newly trained doctors, Samir told Dr. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health.

Like everything else in Iraq, rebuilding the health sector has been greatly slowed by violence and problems within the Iraqi government.

For instance, of about 70 health care centers scheduled for construction by July, only 44 were completed. Of those, 20 had been turned over to the Ministry of Health to administer and only eight were open at the end of July, according to the most recent report by Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.